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First-person: Hispanic Sunday school conference may open doors
New seminar helps leaders overcome challenges
About two years ago I heard that since 1998, 80 percent of all new church starts in the Southern Baptist Convention have been ethnic plants. At least half of those are Hispanic church starts.
That caused me to wonder how many Hispanic SBC church plants are establishing a Sunday school to reach and assimilate families?
I’ve posed this question to various Hispanic church planters around the country and the consensus has been that Sunday school, while effective in many established churches, doesn’t appear to be a viable model for Hispanic church plants for three reasons:
1. Space can be one of the greatest challenges Hispanic church plants face since many meet in homes for Bible study.
2. Many see Sunday school as a very complicated, administrative “monster” that can be very difficult to administrate when space, resources and leadership are extremely limited or lacking altogether.
3. Many Hispanic planters themselves have a negative perception of Sunday schools or have had negative experiences where teachers just dispersed information instead of aiming for spiritual transformation.
With these facts in mind I set off on a quest to try to address these challenges by working with experienced Hispanic church planters who have successfully planted churches using Sunday school and have overcome space, administrative and teaching challenges.
Daniel Caceres of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and Luis Sura, pastor of Iglesia de las Americas (Church of the Americas) in Franklin, Tenn., joined me in developing a seminar that would not only tackle these three concerns among Hispanic church plants, but would also demonstrate how Sunday school has a simple “built in” process for making disciples.
A new LifeWay-sponsored conference – La Escuela Dominical Sencilla (The Simple Sunday School) – was the result. More than 100 participants from four different states participated in this introductory event April 9-10 at LifeWay’s home office in Nashville,Tenn.
Just as Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger outlined in “Simple Church” that, “’vibrant churches’ have a simple process for making disciples,” I set out to show how Sunday school itself is a “simple” foundational process for making disciples by using LifeWay’s Connect, Grow, Serve, Go strategy.
In his new book, “Great Expectations,” David Francis writes that he discovered 87.5 percent of the vibrant churches interviewed for “Simple Church,” use Sunday school as the second step in their disciple-making strategy. You see, “simple” Sunday school is a foundational teaching/learning strategy that makes disciples of all nations by helping people connect to God, grow into the likeness of Christ, serve the Lord inside and outside of the church, and go and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to all nations.
The new conference revolves around helping participants answer two questions: “Who are we to be?” and “What are we to do?” When Sunday school can help people discover who they are to be in Christ, they will be better equipped to do what Christ has called them to do. You could say it’s “simple.”
When Hispanic church leaders hear this Sunday school message with clarity and understand that there is movement within the Sunday school, it becomes easier to bring about alignment among all church age-group leaders as they move in the same direction and focus on making disciples through Sunday school.
This is a timely seminar that helps all Hispanic church planters and leaders see Sunday school in a new light that makes it worthwhile to find solutions to the age-old challenges of space, administration and leadership. Let’s just keep it simple.
Sergio Arce is LifeWay’s national Hispanic church ministry specialist. He can be contacted at sergio.arce@lifeway.com. Go to LifeWay.com/Espanol for more information.
Other La Escuela Dominical Sencilla conferences in 2010 will take place in Upland, Calif., May 21-22; Oklahoma City, June 4-5; and Houston, dates to be determined. In 2011, La Escuela Dominical Sencilla will be offered in Scottsdale, Ariz., March 5; and Baltimore, May 7.
